List Clean-up

For the end of the year, I'm doing a bit of list clean-up. There are quite a few cars on the list whose status is uncertain, but there are three that I've decided to remove from the list because their current existence seems especially doubtful.

All three are PCCs. The first is Muni 1111, a PCC built in 1946 as St. Louis Public Service 1707. It was sold in 1994 to Gunnar Henrioulle, aka Tahoe Valley Lines PCC Railway, and was stored in Lake Tahoe until around 2007. Supposedly, that year it was sold to the City of Savannah, GA, and moved to Warren Railcar Services in Warren, PA, for conversion into a battery-powered heritage trolley. But there, the train goes cold - I've never seen a photo of it in Warren (or in Savannah, for that matter), and I haven't heard anything at all about the car in 15 years. Warren Railcar Services is long out of business and the Savannah heritage trolley was inaugurated (using a Melbourne car), ran for a while, and then ended. My best guess is that car 1111 was scrapped at some point. It's shown above, in a photo I believe was taken around 2006-2007, in Lake Tahoe; the two cars to the right were among the dozen or so that were sold to a developer in St. Charles, MO, with all of the PCCs being scrapped in 2011 after the developer went bust in the 2008 recession.

The other two PCC cars being taken off the PNAERC list are Tandy Subway rebuilds ("Winnebagos") of DC Transit 1945 air-electric PCC cars. Tandy cars 3 and 6 were supposedly acquired by Brookville Equipment Corporation in Pennsylvania, either as rebuild candidates or possibly as parts sources, and I believe they were indeed moved to Brookville. But I haven't seen any recent photos of them and they don't appear in current aerial views of the Brookville site. My guess is that they've been scrapped. UPDATE: Thanks to Wesley Paulson for confirming that these cars have, indeed, been scrapped by Brookville.

All three cars (EDIT: car 1111 only) qualify as "mystery cars" since I don't have any real confirmation that they were scrapped, so if you can contribute any information, it's much appreciated. Thank you!

WRM acquiring a trio of California electric cars

Many thanks to David Johnston for sending along the news that the Western Railway Museum is acquiring three electric cars local to its area. The cars have been under the purview of an organization called Friends of Light Rail and are stored indoors on the property of the Sacramento Regional Transit light rail system. However FoLR, which sounds like it was kind of an ephemeral organization to begin with, has essentially melted away, so the cars were made available to WRM.

The first car being acquired is Pacific Gas & Electric 18, shown above. As far as I know, the history of this car is a bit of a mystery insofar as its builder and vintage are unknown. It began life as a California car and was later enclosed, as were many Sacramento cars. I believe it's similar to PG&E 14, currently preserved at WRM. These two cars, 14 and 18, have the unusual distinction of being the only "rope brake" cars on the PNAERC roster.

Next up is Sacramento Northern 27, shown here, a suburban California car built in 1908 by St. Louis for the Northern Electric. It was used in "Elverta Scoot" service between Chico and Elverta (more info here). It's the oldest SN electric car preserved and is a unique piece of equipment among the extant SN fleet.

Finally, we have Pacific Gas & Electric 65, a lightweight "Christmas present car" built in 1929 by American for Sacramento. This car is identical to PG&E 63, already preserved at WRM, and the museum tentatively plans to ultimately restore whichever of the two cars is assessed to be in better condition.

There's one additional car stored as part of the FoLR collection: Pacific Gas & Electric 36, shown here, is a large California car built by American in 1913. However it's not going to be preserved for two reasons: first of all, it's in extremely poor condition and its body is collapsing; second, identical sister car 35 is preserved in fully (and beautifully) restored condition in Sacramento as a representative of the type.

Speaking of Pacific Gas & Electric 35, David also sent along photos of that car, shown below. Car 35 was restored in the 1980s by Fred Bennett for the San Jose light rail system, and given their location, the car was given a faux paint job to represent "San Jose Railroad 129" - a car that never existed. However in 1999 the car was sent back home to Sacramento, where it has been stored in good condition - though largely unused - in its San Jose garb. (I have seen early-2000s photos of it lettered PG&E 35, but those may have been stickers or magnets used for a one-time event.)